Capital Prep's Kiah Gillespie Has A Guard's Mentality

Kiah Gillespie

John Woike / Hartford Courant

Capital Prep's Kiah Gillespie, the best player on the No. 1 team in the state, hopes to end her senior season with a third straight state championship. Then she's off to Maryland to continue her career.

Capital Prep's Kiah Gillespie, the best player on the No. 1 team in the state, hopes to end her senior season with a third straight state championship. Then she's off to Maryland to continue her career. (John Woike / Hartford Courant)

HARTFORD – Ask Kiah Gillespie what position she plays and she will tell you she's a guard. "I think I'm a wing, a 2-3," she said Thursday. "Yeah. I am, I'm a guard. I have a guard mind-set."

Considering that Gillespie is 6 feet 2, this was not necessarily a problem for Capital Prep girls basketball coach Tammy Millsaps when she took the job in Gillespie's freshman year. But Millsaps wanted Gillespie to have a post mind-set, too.

"I said, 'Not happening. ... Her mind-set is she is a guard. But she developed a post game. She's a finesse kid, but when push comes to shove and we need her down there in that post, she's going to get down there and bang and do what we need her to do in the paint."

That versatility is what attracted schools like Tennessee and Maryland to offer her scholarships. Gillespie, who lives in Meriden, chose Maryland, where she will head after graduating from Capital Prep with a boatload of accolades and state titles. She is the reigning state Gatorade player of the year. She became the second girls player in the state chosen to play in the McDonald's All-American Game in April. She leads the state in rebounding (16.4) and is second in scoring (30.5) to Weaver's Shaquana Edwards (30.8). She became the 18th player in state history to score 2,000 career points in a victory over Windham Tech in the CSC tournament quarterfinals Friday and she has more than 1,000 rebounds.

Kiah Gillespie

John Woike, Hartford Courant

Even knocking the glasses off Kiah Gillespie of Capital Prep didn't help Destine Perry (L), Haley Vanty (R) and Mercy Monday night at the University of Hartford as Prep rolled to an 88-48 victory on Martin Luther King Day. Gillespie had 28 points and 16 rebounds in the win.

Even knocking the glasses off Kiah Gillespie of Capital Prep didn't help Destine Perry (L), Haley Vanty (R) and Mercy Monday night at the University of Hartford as Prep rolled to an 88-48 victory on Martin Luther King Day. Gillespie had 28 points and 16 rebounds in the win. (John Woike, Hartford Courant)

Her team has two state titles, in Class S two years ago and Class L last year, and is poised to win a third in Class L as the CIAC state tournament starts Friday with qualifying rounds. Capital Prep (19-1) is No. 1 in the Courant rankings and beat Mercy, now ranked third, by 40 in January. The Trailblazers are ranked No. 20 by USA Today, after beating Potter's House Christian (Fla.) 77-69, a game in which Gillespie had 32 points and 27 rebounds.

And she's a senior. It's almost over.

"It's great when you come in as a coach your first year and you have a kid with talent like Kiah and think, 'Wow, I got four years of this,'" Millsaps said. "You don't think about that first year how quickly that four years will come and it's here now. We still got a few more games.

"Not only does she mean something to me but to the Capital Prep basketball program, also to the school. She's looked up to by a lot of her classmates as being a role model."

Gillespie started playing basketball when she was 4, spurred on by her older brother Levy. Kiah saw the attention Levy got and wanted that, too. Their dad, Levy Gillespie Sr., coaches the boys at Capital Prep.

"I've always gone to his practices, sometimes I'd practice, shoot around, get in the drills," Kiah said. "I'd be practicing with Andre Drummond, Khalil Dukes. It was crazy. A little 7-year-old in practice with Andre. Trying not to get my shot blocked. I wasn't super good but I knew how to play. I could make a shot."

She laughed. Now her team practices against boys, something that's made her stronger and tougher.

"My mind-set's completely changed since freshman year," Gillespie said. "I came in thinking, I want to shoot jump shots and be pretty and be finessing layups. [Now I'm more like] give me the ball in the post, I don't care if I got to hit somebody. Sometimes you just got to get down and dirty and just get it done.

"I like to be a matchup nightmare. I want to be able to shoot, dribble, get to the basket and post up. If you're bigger than me, I can beat you off the dribble, if you're smaller than me, I can post you up and if you give me a step, I'll shoot and if you play up on me, I'll be able to get by you. I want to be able to do all those things. Just never limit myself."

She and junior forward Desiree Elmore, who has committed to Syracuse, have teamed up to give Capital Prep a presence on the national scene. After Capital Prep beat South Medford (Oregon) 82-50 in Springfield in January, South Medford coach Tom Cole – whose team had played some of the best teams in the country — said: "Their two best players possessed a lot of maturity. The box scores don't tell how good those two make everybody else."

Gillespie plans to study psychology at Maryland and aspires to be a college coach some day.

"Without Kiah's presence, without what she can do on the floor, I don't think we'd be where we are on the national level," Millsaps said. "We would be very successful and talented here on the state level, but when you start moving out to the national level, she's one of the key pieces that's helped us move into the national spotlight."